Published byStanford Medicine

Men’s Health

Over the past two decades, there have been a number of studies suggesting that men’s sperm counts have been steadily declining. Now research out of Spain and published in the journal Sleep suggests a connection between sleep apnea and decreased sperm production.

Michael Eisenberg, MD, a Stanford expert in male fertility, thinks the results are important but inconclusive. When reached for comment he told me:

My research focuses on the links between a man’s overall health and his reproductive health, so this study has a lot of connections. I think it shows another health factor that can impact fertility; we are seeing sleep apnea more and more commonly, and here’s something showing a link with decreased sperm production. A big drawback of the study is that before we can incorporate it in clinical practice the research needs to be replicated in humans.

The research, conducted collaboratively by research institutions in Spain, induced intermittent hypoxia (lack of oxygen) in male mice to mimic sleep apnea. These mice, along with a control group who had been experiencing normal oxygen levels, were mated, and researchers compared the numbers of pregnant females and fetuses, which were significantly lower for the hypoxic group.

A study of more than 9,000 men with fertility problems links poor semen quality to a higher chance of having hypertension and other health conditions. The findings suggest that more-comprehensive examinations of men undergoing treatment for infertility would be a smart idea.

About a quarter of the adults in the United States (and in the entire world) have hypertension, or high blood pressure. Although it’s the most important preventable risk factor for premature death worldwide, hypertension often goes undiagnosed.

In a study published today in Fertility and Sterility, Stanford urologist Mike Eisenberg, MD, PhD, and his colleagues analyzed the medical records of 9,387 men, mostly between 30 and 50 years old, who had provided semen samples in the course of being evaluated at Stanford to determine the cause of their infertility. The researchers found a substantial link between poor semen quality and specific diseases of the circulatory system, notably hypertension, vascular disease and heart disease.

“To the best of my knowledge, there’s never been a study showing this association before,” Eisenberg told me when I interviewed him for a press release about the findings. “There are a lot of men who have hypertension, so understanding that correlation is of huge interest to us.”

In the past few years, Eisenberg has used similar big data techniques to discover links between male infertility and cancer and heightened overall mortality, as well as between childlessness and death rates in married heterosexual men.

Eisenberg sums it all up and proposes a way forward in the release:

Infertility is a warning: Problems with reproduction may mean problems with overall health … That visit to a fertility clinic represents a big opportunity to improve their treatment for other conditions, which we now suspect could actually help resolve the infertility they came in for in the first place.

Ok, so it may *appear* that this post is just an excuse to post a cute hedgehog picture. After all, who could resist that little face? But this is really meant to be a quick shout-out to Stanford developmental biologist Philip Beachy, PhD, who has shown yet again that the signalling protein called hedgehog is critically important during many aspects of development.

In Beachy’s latest work, published earlier this week in Nature Cell Biology, he and his colleagues show that the precise control of when and where the hedgehog protein is made dictates the branching of tubules in the adult prostate (you may remember other recent work from Beachy’s lab about the role that hedgehog plays in bladder cancer, and what that could mean for patients). The findings of the current research suggest that aberrant hedgehog signalling could play a role in the prostatic hyperplasia, or non-cancerous enlargement of the prostate, which often happens as men age.

Past research has shown that stress, anger and depression can increase a person’s risk for stroke and heart attacks. Now new findings published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology show that cardiovascular and psychological reactions to mental stress vary based on gender.

In the study (subscription required), participants with heart disease completed three mentally stressful tasks. Researchers monitored changes in their heart using echocardiography, measured blood pressure and heart rate, and took blood samples during the test and rest periods. According to a journal release:

Researchers from the Duke Heart Center found that while men had more changes in blood pressure and heart rate in response to the mental stress, more women experienced myocardial ischemia, decreased blood flow to the heart. Women also experienced increased platelet aggregation, which is the start of the formation of blood clots, more than men. The women compared with men also expressed a greater increase in negative emotions and a greater decrease in positive emotions during the mental stress tests.

“The relationship between mental stress and cardiovascular disease is well known,” said the study lead author Zainab Samad, M.D., M.H.S., assistant professor of medicine at Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina. “This study revealed that mental stress affects the cardiovascular health of men and women differently. We need to recognize this difference when evaluating and treating patients for cardiovascular disease.”

We’ve partnered with Inspire, a company that builds and manages online support communities for patients and caregivers, to launch a patient-focused series here on Scope. Once a month, patients affected by serious and often rare diseases share their unique stories; this month’s column comes from Dave Staudenmaier.

“The news of your demise has been greatly exaggerated,” joked the surgeon when realizing I might have a rare slow-growing cancer instead of the horrifically aggressive and deadly adenocarcinoma of the pancreas that everyone thought I had.

Figuring out what to do with my life – not getting surgery – is what’s most urgent and important to me

It’s also the cancer that Steve Jobs had (and died from).

I fired my surgeon and my oncologist. Not because of his humor, but because of the urgency he placed on taking out my duodenum, gallbladder, spleen, part of my stomach and my entire pancreas in a “procedure” called a Whipple. No other options were considered or offered. No calls to a PNET specialist were made – so I found one on my own.

I was also told: There is no cure. There is no remission. Treatment options are limited and inconsistent. It’s possible that surgery might have bought me more time – but my new care team understood that I favored quality of life (hence my decision to opt out of surgery) over length of my life. And thankfully, some new treatments not available in Steve Jobs’ time have worked to shrink my tumors by sixty percent.

Though we’re fighting to keep the tumors from growing again for as long as possible, it sure looks like I won’t be around as long as I’d hoped. And though the drugs are helping control this beast, I know they won’t help forever and there will be pain and fatigue and other quality-of-life issues. So figuring out what to do with my life – not getting surgery – is what’s most urgent and important to me.

My work. Should I quit my job like so many of my fellow PNET patients have? No way! I love my job, and it has only gotten better since my diagnosis. Seemingly by providence, last year my position was changed and I now head development of patient engagement software for the large health-care solutions firm I work for. I have the opportunity to directly help tens of millions of patients – patients like me.

My family. I have a wife and three teenagers. How can I create more time to make memories with them while I still feel good? I now pay someone else to mow my lawn and perform those other maintenance services that previously consumed much of my weekend time. We live in Florida where there’s a lot of fun things to do as a family, so we do it – spending more time together than we used to. We also blew some savings for a family vacation to Turks and Caicos. We’ve never vacationed like that before and it was awesome – something that created good memories. I want to do something like that again.

My everyday life. Fewer things to worry about means less stress. After I was diagnosed, we gave away more stuff than we kept and we don’t miss it. All bills are now auto-paid so we don’t think about them and can’t miss a payment. We have one debit card and one credit card, and we pay for most things in cash. And we learned to say “no,” as we limited our obligations to maximize our free time. I’ve also tried new things: So far I’ve learned how to ride a horse and how to cook. Up next, skeet shooting.

I continue to rethink and reprioritize my life, and I’m thankful that my new care team understands what’s important to me and provides treatment that aligns with my goals.

Dave Staudenmaier is Senior Director of Development for Greenway Health, where he leads an awesome team creating software products benefiting patients and physicians. Dave continues to fight PNET with the support of his wife of 23 years and three children.

This month is National Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, and Stanford urologic oncologists are sharing their knowledge about prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment, both online and in person. This Saturday, at a free community talk hosted by the Stanford Cancer Center, several experts will be on hand to answer questions and discuss prostate cancer screening, “watchful waiting,” diagnostic advances, and treatment options. In an online Q&A and the video above, Eila Skinner, MD, chair of urology, and James Brooks, MD, chief of the urologic oncology division, and others provide more insight on the disease. And during the month of September, more information about prostate cancer, including the benefits of targeted prostate biopsy, will be offered on Twitter via @StanfordHosp.

We’ve partnered with Inspire, a company that builds and manages online support communities for patients and caregivers, to launch a patient-focused series here on Scope. Once a month, patients affected by serious and often rare diseases share their unique stories; this month’s bonus column comes from patient advocate Jim Rieder.

Caring for others has always been part of my approach to life. I built my career in health care serving as the CEO of a statewide non-profit foundation, in addition to being the CEO of seven diverse types of hospitals. Naturally, I was intimately familiar with the steps necessary for a person to become an empowered patient. But when I was forced into the role of being the patient, the initial transformation was surprisingly more intense and unsettling than I had imagined it would be.

Managing prostate cancer is a battle. Recognize it as such. Invest the time and energy necessary to empower yourself with the knowledge you’ll need to make informed choices about your path of treatment

When a person is diagnosed with any type of cancer, the obvious objective is to get rid of it completely as quickly as possible. After being diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2002 and doing my due diligence, I ultimately decided that a radical prostatectomy was the best course of treatment for me. I had the surgery in 2003, and I’m very happy to report that I’ve been cancer-free ever since. However, it’s important to recognize that there’s not a one-size-fits-all solution for treating prostate cancer.

In response to prostate cancer diagnosis, it’s critical to take a step back, take a few deep breaths, and try to approach the situation calmly and logically. Don’t let anyone rush you. There’s ALWAYS time to evaluate the medical options and get a second opinion from another medical expert who ideally is not affiliated with the same practice as the physician who provided the initial diagnosis or treatment recommendations. Know that watchful waiting or active surveillance can be viable options. Every treatment has side effects, which typically include erectile dysfunction and/or incontinence. The skill of the physician and the amount of experience specific to the procedure being performed are very important in minimizing the presence and ongoing impact of these side effects.

Some guys pursue their treatment and quietly return to business as usual without ever talking about their prostate cancer or its side effects. While I respect the option of maintaining privacy, I encourage anyone who’s facing a diagnosis of prostate cancer to reach out for help from others who have already traveled the same path, and to reciprocate down the line by helping others who will be grappling with the involuntary transition into joining the prostate cancer community. Also recognize that prostate cancer affects spouses or partners, as well as family members. Their support is also very important.

Below Stefanick explains why a lack of understanding about the different clinical manifestations of prevalent diseases in women and men can lead to health disparities:

…Because we may have primarily studied a particular disease in only one of the sexes, usually males (and most basic research is done in male rodents), the resulting treatments are most often based on that one sex’s physiology. Such treatments in the other sex might not be appropriate. One example is sleep medication. Ambien is the prescription medicine recently featured on the TV show, 60 Minutes. Reporters found out that women were getting twice the dose they should because they had been given the men’s doses; consequently, the women were falling asleep at the wheel and having accidents. Physicians had not taken into account that women are smaller and their livers’ metabolize drugs differently than do men’s. Some women have responded by reducing their own medication dosages, and yet that practice of self-adjusting is not the safest way to proceed, either.

Men with multiple defects in their semen appear to be at increased risk of dying sooner than men with normal semen, according to a study of some 12,000 men who were evaluated at two different centers specializing in male-infertility problems.

In that study, led by Michael Eisenberg, MD, PhD, Stanford’s director of male reproductive medicine and surgery, men with more than one such defect such as reduced total semen volume, low sperm counts or motility, or aberrant sperm shape were more than twice as likely to die, over a seven-and-a-half-year follow-up period, than men found to be free of such issues.

Given that one in seven couples in developed countries encounter fertility problems at some point, Eisenberg told me, a two-fold increase in mortality rates qualifies as a serious health issue. As he told me for an explanatory release I wrote about the study:

“Smoking and diabetes — either of which doubles mortality risk — both get a lot of attention… But here we’re seeing the same doubled risk with male infertility, which is relatively understudied.”

Moreover, the difference was statistically significant, despite the fact that relatively few men died, due primarily to their relative youth (typically between 30 and 40 years old) when first evaluated. And the difference persisted despite the researchers’ efforts to control for differences in health status and age between the two groups.

Eisenberg has previously found that childless men are at heightened risk of death from cardiovascular disease and that men with low sperm production face increased cancer risk.

New research from Stanford and Montana State University shows that stem cells made from the skin of adult, infertile men can be used to create primordial germ cells, which are cells that normally become sperm, when transplanted into the reproductive system of mice.

The findings hold the potential to shed light on the earliest steps of human reproduction and could lead to the development of future therapies for men diagnosed with azoospermia, the most severe form of male factor infertility, or those rendered sterile after cancer treatments. My colleague Krista Conger explains the work in a release:

The research used skin samples from five men to create what are known as induced pluripotent stem cells, which closely resemble embryonic stem cells in their ability to become nearly any tissue in the body. Three of the men carried a type of mutation on their Y chromosome known to prevent the production of sperm; the other two were fertile.

The germ cells made from stem cells stopped differentiating in the mice before they produced mature sperm (likely because of the significant differences between the reproductive processes of humans and mice) regardless of the fertility status of the men from whom they were derived. However, the fact that the infertile men’s cells could give rise to germ cells at all was a surprise.

Previous research in mice with a similar type of infertility found that although they had germ cells as newborns, these germ cells were quickly depleted. The Stanford findings suggest that the infertile men may have had at least a few functioning germ cells as newborns or infants. Although more research needs to be done, collecting and freezing some of this tissue from young boys known to have this type of infertility mutation may give them the option to have their own children later in life, the researchers said.